


The World So High

by deskclutter



Category: Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Community: 31_days, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yvaine doesn't sing for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World So High

**Title:** The World So High  
**Day/Theme:** October 16th / the day dies easy  
**Series:** Stardust (book-verse)  
**Character/Pairing:** Tristran/Yvaine  
**Rating:** PG

Summer in Stormhold is only different from winter by dint of being warmer. The fortress' walls loom forbiddingly over a dreary landscape, as most forbidding fortresses do.

"I don't mind it as much as I thought I might," Tristran told Yvaine once. "Perhaps it is because of my blood."

Occasionally they had walked up to the marvellous open roof where they had sat and watched the stars, and Yvaine had once tried to hum the equivalent of a star's song within the frequency of the human ear, but only once and Tristran had never asked her to do so again. "I do not miss the land," she had told him, watching distant constellations twinkle in the sky. "Though I was not sorry to walk it when we did."

One evening, Yvaine sat and watched. She was waiting, and when the moment came, she knew immediately. She closed her eyes, and she went outside, about her sorry business. Her eyes stung and she felt fatigued, though she had done no heavy exercise that day, or week, or month. When night fell it was a balm against her eyelids, and the servants watched sadly in wonder as she ascended the staircase to the roof alone. She glittered softly in the midnight air.

She greeted her sisters, who sparkled back at her, and she began to sing. She sang a wordless hum of a unicorn and a candle and a burnt hand. She sang of a lady and her lord, and a star's heart. She sang of love, of all the little failings and the wonder that it brought. She sang about a man who had grown into himself, and never seemed able to get lost. She sang about a griffon who had not been as wise as he had thought for a mere boy and a star to outwit him. She sang about the song a man had hummed in the mornings to make his wife laugh, though she never had or would. She sang about a hoary beard and how it had changed a king, but never so much that he had not remained the boy who had freed a girl from a moonshine-and-silver chain.

She sang about Death, and the cyclic nature of time, and she sang about the life the last Lord of Stormhold had lived to the fullest.

("That was a sad song," he had said.

"We have sadder songs," said Yvaine. "When a star dies, and stars do die sometimes, we would sing for their passing. We commemorate their lives, and they are never forgotten."

"That sounds wonderful," he had told her. "Yvaine, when I pass, don't grieve overmuch."

"For _you_?" she had snorted.

"Thank you," Tristran had said.)

When she stopped, tears no longer marked their trace down her cheeks. She turned to limp back down the stairs, but for a moment, she stayed to listen.

Above, her sisters sang for her, and the passing of her husband, Tristran Thorne.


End file.
